Briefly stated, this invention relates to illuminated flexible touch switches, and more particularly to flexible touch switches having electroluminescent lighting of the switch panel or selected portions thereof, including keytop indicia.
Flexible touch switches have been proposed with electroluminescent panels disposed behind the switches. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,318,839--Schwerdt discloses an electroluminescent panel behind a flexible touch switch with the illumination passing through a hole in an opaque top condutive member on a deformable membrane forming part of the touch switch.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,060,703 discloses a sandwich type computer keyboard with a flexible electroluminescent panel forming part of a laminated structure to provide backlighting of a translucent sheet of bubbles labeled with alphanumeric legends forming the keytops.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,320,268--Brown discloses a flexible membrane keyboard disposed below an electroluminescent panel with holes in the panel to allow push button actuators to pass through the electroluminescent panel and to close the underlying switches when pushed from above. The push buttons are transparent and illuminated from beneath by the electroluminescent panel. The foregoing patents are exemplary of the prior art, in which the electroluminescent member is disposed beneath the pushbutton and simply illuminates it by providing backlighting.
It would be desirable to provide a simple illuminated flexible touch switch, which is provided in simple laminated constructions and adaptable to large panels of flexible touch switches. It would also be desirable to provide an illuminated touch switch in which the EL panel itself is flexible and incorporates the indicia on the key as part of the EL panel.
Accordingly, one object of the invention is to provide an illuminated flexible touch switch panel of simple laminated construction.
Another object of the invention is to provide an electroluminescent panel which incorporates the keytop indicia and forms an integral part of a flexible touch switch panel.